White House Author

Kathy Giusti is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) and a multiple myeloma patient. Under Giusti’s leadership, the MMRF, working in close partnership with academic and industry partners, has made unprecedented progress against multiple myeloma. Over the last decade, six new treatments have been approved by the FDA, the myeloma genome sequenced, and patients’ survival has doubled. Most recently, the MMRF launched the CoMMpass study, a landmark study to define the molecular subtypes of the disease to drive toward precision medicine. The study will follow 1,000 newly diagnosed multiple myeloma patients longitudinally over at least five years, collecting comprehensive clinical data and tissue samples which will be extensively analyzed using cutting-edge sequencing technology. CoMMpass data will be placed into an open-access data platform, together with data from other MMRF-driven initiatives as well as from other sources entirely, to create the most robust set of clinical and genomic data in any cancer that is openly available to researchers worldwide. In 2011, Giusti was named to the TIME 100 List of the world’s most influential people and has received numerous awards and honors for her work, the Harvard Business School Leadership Award and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Vermont.